


In Nomine Patris

by accrues



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Tag: s01e13, F/M, Think Piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 08:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10382694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accrues/pseuds/accrues
Summary: Tags onto where we left off with Dan in the final episode of season one. Dan is a sketchy dude, but he really wants to be a good dad to his daughter. And that means getting out of jail and protecting her.What he doesn't know is that right while he's sitting in a holding cell, his daughter has been kidnapped by Malcolm Graham. When he finds that out, he'sreallypissed off.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So Dan is a sketchy guy. I mean seriously. The guy kills two people, technically succeeds in killing another (who gets brought back to life and then dies again), does a lot of seedy stuff within the LAPD, and then leads to the death of another guy.
> 
> I love him though. For some reason. I think he really is trying? It's just that he's not very good at it.
> 
> Anyway, this reflects my thoughts re: the season finale, because it never really got covered. Poor Dan's kid gets kidnapped by the guy he didn't (but actually did?) kill, and _he's_ sitting in a cell unable to protect her.
> 
> Oh and he has daddy issues.
> 
> Blame Erya for the title - in case it's not clear, it means 'In the name of the Father'. ~~Blame~~ Thanks Erya for the beta.

_Shit_ , Dan thinks, as he’s left alone inside one of the interview rooms. _Shit_. 

He’s sitting on the wrong side of the table, and his eye catches a flash of light as it reflects off the lens of the security camera. Well at least he’s not handcuffed. It could be worse. 

He has to admit though, it’s pretty damn bad.

He might be going to jail. He’s _definitely_ going to lose his job. And if Malcolm manages to get away for good, the vindictive asshole will almost certainly drop a tip regarding Palmetto Street and exactly who pulled the trigger that day.

Dan stares at the cold metal of the interview room table. He’s used this room so many times to interview homicide suspects, to interrogate _murderers_. No one else can know that he’s one of their number. Chloe knowing is bad enough.

He sighs heavily and tips forward, his head falling into his hands naturally, like his neck has gone and given up, refused to hold him up any longer. The palms of his hands smell like metal and dust, like the coppery taste in his mouth when he bites too hard at his tongue.

It’s been two months and three weeks since Dan shot that dirty scum Aldi and his ineffectual bodyguard, since Dan shot Malcolm and left him to die. He _should_ have died. It would have made everything so much easier.

Dan hasn’t slept more than three hours a night since it happened, passed out on the couch more often than not, unable to sleep in his own bed and staring at the ceiling for hours instead, haunted more by thoughts of being caught than by the feeling of his service weapon kicking against his hand as the bullets loosed once, twice, three times.

Dan’s so tired, but the twisting feeling in his chest that has been slowly getting worse over that time is also making his heart thud a little faster so that he’s painfully alert while his eyes itch and his head pounds with exhaustion. His fingers massage at the shallow dips of his temples, hopelessly looking for relief.

Lucifer Morningstar is the reason he’s done this. Well, Morningstar and Chloe of course, who is in way over her head when it comes to that guy. But Dan has always had a blindspot when it came to Chloe- a blindspot that grew to encompass Trixie when she came into their lives. Usually he’d do anything to make Chloe happy. He _wants_ to make her happy. But lying about Palmetto Street in his attempts to make her back off made her miserable, drove her even further away from his arms, and into those of this man who is everything Dan isn’t, including _insane_.

He sits up when he hears the sound of a door closing nearby, and frowns into the reflection of the observation room’s one way-window. All he sees is his own face frowning back, eyes tired and face drawn. _Shit, Dan_ , he thinks. _What the hell have you done now?_

The interview they put him through is pretty standard fare. He wasn’t really expecting anything else - removing evidence from lock-up, while a pretty serious offence and one that makes him an accessory to murder, is a pretty straight-forward crime. Why he did it was a slightly curlier question, one he dodges pretty easily by alluding to the very real threats Malcolm had made against Dan’s wife and child.

And then he’s alone again, staring at a written confession and wondering about how pointless it is to even pretend like he has a choice in signing it. He stares at the paper, flicks his eyes to the mirrored wall, and decides to call his lawyer.

Which is how he ends up in one of the precinct’s holding cells, staring at the wall and wondering how he ended up on this side of the bars. The beat cop that pulled the door closed had avoided his eyes and awkwardly shuffled out of the room without a further word, like this whole experience could possibly be more awkward for him than it is for Dan.

For years the police force had been everything. Dan had left his family behind in Sacramento - the only home they’d ever really had after bouncing around so much from one military base to the next. He’d forged a new home by himself, away from the hurt and self-destruction buried deep in his mom, away from the curses his Nanna spat any time Dan’s father was mentioned, the way she denied ever having a son.

He paces across the width of the cell and then back again, tracking left, then right, trying too hard not to think, and winding up thinking too much as a result.

He’d moved to LA, to the one place in America you can truly reinvent yourself, and made a home for himself using a job he knew instinctively he’d be good at. He’d made a family through that precinct, met Chloe on the beat, grown up through the ranks with her, spent hours working cases with her, swapping information across the dinner table, flirting between wine and homicide on dates where she’d smile and tuck her hair behind her ear, and Dan would feel like he was flying.

He has to punch at the wall in an attempt to squash the feelings of rage and sorrow and _guilt_ that fly up to stir in his gut. The brick scratches at his knuckles and it feels good, an almost freezing frisson of pain and the deep ache of bruised bone.

‘Espinoza.’ 

He wheels around on one foot, angry at everything, but mostly at himself for being so stupid - all he seems to be able to do recently is screw things up - and comes face to face with one of the homicide detectives, Elliot Cross. Well, they would be face to face, if the barred wall of the pen wasn’t splitting the difference.

‘What,’ he snaps, a little bit too harshly. It’s not his lawyer, no way he’d swung that this late, and he’s not really in the mood to talk anyway. Not to Cross, not to his lawyer, not to anyone. Except maybe Malcolm Graham, who he’d quite like to give a good kicking right about now.

‘It’s about your daughter.’

Every muscle in Dan’s body freezes. He’s halfway across the cell when the words hit him, and he stops, hands slowly reaching up to curl around the metal bars, heart pounding in his own ears and his stomach swooping both up and sideways at the same time. ‘What _about_ my daughter?’ he bites out. ‘What the _hell_ could have happened to my daughter today of all days?’

Cross winces a little but puts a hand on his hip, just over where his badge rests - a practiced move all the detectives are familiar with, a slight show of power, and it makes Dan grind his teeth together in anger and that tiny river of terror that is cutting through the cloud of rage. Dan’s hands clench even tighter around the cold metal of the bars, feeling as if he could rip them from their moorings if it was what he needed to do to get to his daughter.

He _won’t_ abandon her.

‘She’s okay,’ Cross says placatingly, the lie in his words sitting uncomfortably in the air. ‘Calm down, alright?’

‘Calm _down_? What the hell did you expect, starting a sentence like that?’

‘She’s going to be fine, once the medics clear her-’

‘ _What_?’ All of the muscles in Dan’s arms are locked, rigid with tension. ‘I’m sorry, _medics_?’

Cross hesitates, twitching a little backwards. Dan must look insane, framed by bars and practically kicking them down with anger. ‘Hey man, I’m just the messenger. Dispatch heard on the radio, did a ring around. Just thought you should know.’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Dan actually does kick at the bars this time, making his ankle jar. He’s not as young as he was. ‘Fuck,’ he repeats. ‘What happened?’

‘Graham,’ Cross says solemnly. ‘What the hell, yeah? Decker was right.’

Dan’s throat suddenly feels like it’s closing up. Malcolm. God, if Dan had just _killed_ him, this wouldn’t be happening.

But. He remembers what he’d said, in that weird moment with Morningstar and his… brother? earlier that day. Redemption. That’s what this is, why he’s standing in a cage while his daughter is being tended to by medics, and he wants to just scream and rage and tear at Malcolm’s flesh. How dare he touch Dan’s daughter with his dirty hands?

‘Where. Is. Graham?’ Dan grits out. 

Cross hesitates again, obviously thinking his response over, then he shrugs and says, ‘dead,’ and relief flushes through Dan, like a wave cresting. Good. There’s a peace in that, echoing in his head. He wishes he’d been able to pull the trigger for the second time, to end it once and for all, but at least the bastard’s finally gone to hell. That’s all that matters.

Redemption? That was before someone touched his kid.

‘Who killed him?’ The words come out like he’s somewhere else, like he can’t really hear himself speak. 

‘Decker,’ Cross says quietly, and the pain comes rushing back, plummeting Dan back into this cell, back into this moment where his wife had to finish the job he’d started, had to save his kid while Dan was absent, as always.

‘Shit,’ Dan says, equally as quietly, his ears no longer ringing.

‘Yeah,’ Cross agrees. ‘Hang tight,’ he pats at the bars. ‘I’ll let you know the moment I get some more information okay?’

‘You couldn’t just let me out, Elliot? I mean, I turned myself in for chrissake. It’s not like I’m gonna run off.’

Cross shakes his head slowly. ‘Hey, no can do, man. You know how it is.’

Dan sighs, and presses his forehead against the bars, temples sliding between them. ‘Yeah, whatever. I get it.’

By the time he looks up, several minutes later, Elliot Cross is gone.

He sinks down on the bench. It’s hard, and scratched with numerous insults about the police in general that he can’t help but empathise with at the moment. Chloe. Trixie. Malcolm goddamn Graham - who is dead, thank christ - and all those secrets he still could have spilt. Now that the fight has fallen away from him Dan suddenly feels strangely empty, the fatigue coming back full force in response to the rollercoaster of emotions that he just ran through. 

Redemption, right? That’s why he’s here? Because he’d told Chloe that he’d pulled the trigger on three men and that he’d been _disappointed_ when the last of them had somehow magically woken up out of a coma. Because the look on her face had been worse than the hellish visions he had been imagining all these past months. Because she’d slapped him, and it had felt like the very least of his penance.

His head bangs against the wall a little too hard as he lets it fall back. She deserves better. She always has. And despite his best wishes to be present, to _not_ be like his waste of a father, he’s always left too much to her, always missed too many of Trixie’s moments. 

Now he’s likely to miss more.

The ceiling is stained and patterned. He doesn’t think he’s ever looked up in here before. It looks like a stain-glass window, warped and twisted like the depictions of damned souls in hell. His eyes close against the view and inside his head are new torments that make his stomach churn.

Somehow, he falls asleep like that. He blames age, and the fact that he’s now so tired he could probably fall asleep standing up.

‘Hey, Dan.’

It’s Cross again, jerking Dan out of his sleeping fugue state. Dan’s neck aches from the position and he twists it a little, trying to get some movement out of it.

He prises his eyes open and peers blearily across the cell. Cross is at the gate now, which seems promising. ‘Yeah?’

‘C’mon,’ Cross instructs, opening the gate and gesturing for Dan to follow him. 

The glances Dan gets from the other cops in the general area as they travel toward the interview rooms are mixed between pity and uncomfortable disappointment. He tries to ignore both, focusing instead on the row of rooms instead. Why are they heading here? It’s getting late, no one in their right mind is picking up the investigation again.

As soon as the door opens, a small blur launches itself at him, and his heart almost sings with the contact. Trixie wraps herself around him, like the monkey they know she is, and his arms settle to embrace her back, clinging for all his life.

All he can see is her, all he can smell is her, and touch- her hair is so soft against his face, and she’s breathing, feather light, against his skin. ‘Daddy,’ she whispers, and he actually coughs a sob he didn’t even know he’d been holding down. Just one, buried in the secrets of her embrace. 

‘Hey, Monkey,’ he breathes back against her.

‘Are you in trouble?’ she asks, little voice scared, and tinged with the tired tone she can never hide when she’s trying to pretend she’s not exhausted.

‘A little,’ he agrees, shifting his arms so they better hold her weight. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Uhhuh,’ she affirms. ‘The ambulance driver gave me a plaster with unicorns on it.’

He has to lean back a little to see where she indicates. There’s what must be a tiny cut on her forehead, because he can’t see anything under the Band-Aid and she’s smiling.

‘Hey, Dan,’ Chloe’s voice is exhausted as well. He looks up, clutching Trixie closer as she burrows her head into his neck. Chloe’s standing by the wall, wearing her black coat, her hair pulled back into a ponytail that has a few too many flyaways to be neat. She looks beat, like she would be having trouble standing if she weren’t supported by the tall man beside her, his arm subtly pushed against her as an anchor.

‘Chloe, thank God.’

Lucifer snorts at him, but Dan’s gaze only barely registers him before it snaps back to Chloe again. ‘I’m sorry,’ Dan whispers. He doesn’t even know what he’s apologising for. In the words, he can feel every meaning.

I’m sorry for not being there. I’m sorry for letting this happen. I’m sorry you had to kill him. I’m sorry I didn’t do it myself. I’m sorry she got hurt. I’m sorry you did too.

‘I know,’ she says in reply, and the whole world goes silent for just that simple moment. Her eyes are on him, his arms are full with the weight of their child, and for just one brief moment, everything he loves is safe and warm and constant.

And then it falls apart.


End file.
